So I have had some issues with my EX4 and I have been consulting with WD Directly. Finally got the Dashboard working, magically… long story and I don’t think that ties in to the slow transfer speeds.
Here is my setup.
WD EX4 - EMPTY
Loaded Bay 1 & 2 with WD Red 2TB Drives (Brand New Out the Box!)
Netgear GS105NA
3 CAT6 Ethernet Cords
I have a Cat6 Ethernet cord running from my Netgear Router/Modem downstairs to my office. One floor straight up.
I have the Cat6 plugged in to my new Netgear 105. Then I ran two 12" CAT6 cords from the NG105 to the WD EX4 Port 1 and 2. Then I plugged a 3’ CAT6 Ethernet from my router in to the computer.
Since the NAS, switch and machine are all within spitting distance and using quality parts I figured that this thing would FLY!!! OH MAN was I wrong.
about 2 years ago I had an Iomega Home Media NAS (1TB) plugged in with CAT5e and about 2 floors away on the factory ATT 2-wire modem and that was lightening fast. Why does my nicer and highly sophisticated equipment move so darn slow? Is there something I can do to optimize?
Thank You for your help! Any replies and opinions are welcome even if it’s to tell me I’m dumb and overlooked something obvious.
This is a common complaints w/ this unit; it has not been resolved all of the Marvel SoC units seem slow w/ the WD MyCloudEX4 being near the bottom of the heap. If your in the return period I would seriously consider returning it spending a little bit more and opting for a Synology unit.
Synology has several smaller units as i’m guessing your only using raid 0 or 1? with the two drives?
Can you share the write speeds you’re getting on this unit? Is the share public or private? I really want to like this setup, but the performance is killing me.
On a private share I average about 12 megabytes/sec transfer
On a public one that number goes up to around 28/30 megs
If I carve out an iscsi target then I’m getting much better performance of about 125megabytes/sec.
10.8 - 11.1 MBPS when transfering a 1 GB file from my desktop to the Public folder.
Ill look in to carving out ISCSI Target. Im not too knowledgable with NAS devices. I have always been a computer nut. building machines, networks, fixing computers and other junk. I am good at what I know, I am not so good at everything. I have been working with and building computers since I got my first x86 machine in 1987… Booting off of 5 3/4 floppy for DOS.
1/ If DNLA is not required, turn off media in the settings (settings > media) . The DNLA server has a habit of eating 100 % processing power as it tries to cahce thumbnails for some files. Hopefully there will be a fix for this soon
2/ If you are not using apple kill the itunes (under media) and timemachine (settings>general)
Ensure that everything you are connected to is gigabit, and no 10/100 switches in between (I had an old router and it was killing the speeds)
I have the DNLA turned on so that I can access this from my SmartTVs or Playstation. Truth be told, I usually just put all my vidoes in to MP4 then load them on my ipad to watch them on TV.
Ill shut off the DNLA.
As for the 2/ If you are not using apple kill the itunes (under media) and timemachine (settings>general) - If I am using iTunes for all my devices and i shut that off will it have a negitave impact on my iTunes, iDevices and such?
My connection between the tower and NAS is like this…
Cat5E wire from Modem/Router downstairs runs in to my Netgear GS105NA Gigabit Switch. Then I have the NAS Eithernet Port 1 plugged in to the GS105NA switch with a 12" CAT6, NAS Eithernet Port 2 plugged in to the GS105NA switch with a 12" CAT6, My desktop machine is plugged in to the GS105NA port 3 with a 36" CAT6. So the machine and NAS should have a pristine connection since they are the only things on the gigabit switch and they are no further than 48" of cable
Mine is also slow. I get 11mb/s over the nerwork (Gigabyte network, 100mb/s)… The most frustrating is that I get 3-4mb/s from my 3.0 USB dock with a 3.0 USB cable to the EX4… Is this a “normal” transfer speed? I think, it’s not.
UPDATE:
I forgot to mention that I had my EX4 hooked up to a 100mb/s switch. I’ve bought another 1 Gbps switch so the overall performance has improved: from painfull 3-9 mbs to 16-24 mbs, which isn’t too great either for my standards because my internet connection is still A+ rated (I’m moving to 250mb/s next month).
Anyway, the 3.0 USB connection is very slow, getting up to 3mb/s. That is hard to understand. As I have explained above, my driver is attached to a 3.0 USB dock and cable, works well connected to my PC but I cannot say the same about the EX4.
